Chapter 4

The next day, the team was in an uproar.

Dennis stormed over with his phone, face like thunder, and shoved the screen in front of Grayson.

"Mr. Pyatt, look at this. Someone sent the chairman an anonymous letter claiming our target company is committing financial fraud."

Grayson leaned in, glanced at it, and scoffed.

"Fraud? This report came from Deloitte and was reviewed by PwC. How could it be fraud?"

He pushed the phone back. "Our competitors are getting desperate, that's all. Some dirty trick from a rival's mole. Find out who it is and end their career."

The room chimed in.

"Has to be a jealous competitor."

"This data looks scary, but it reads like something an amateur wrote."

"Mr. Pyatt's got it exactly right."

I was standing in the doorway with a stack of freshly printed contracts in my arms.

Dennis spotted me.

"Toby, print out this garbage email and file it. We'll need something to show the chairman later."

"Got it," I said.

I walked to the printer and ran off a copy of the anonymous letter I'd written myself. The paper was still warm when I handed it over.

Dennis glanced at it, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it in the trash.

"What a joke."

I bent down, picked the ball of paper out, smoothed it flat, and slid it neatly into a file folder.

Dennis frowned. "Why are you bothering with that?"

"The file needs the original," I said.

He didn't bother replying.

That afternoon, in the break room, I overheard two of the consultants talking.

"The chairman read that letter and slammed his fist on the desk. Says he's going to find whoever leaked it."

"He actually believed it?"

"Believed it, my ass. You know how Mr. Pyatt is. He says anything money can fix isn't a real problem. A little tax exposure like that, he'll pull some strings, and it'll be handled in no time."

I walked back slowly, cup of water in hand.

Just as I'd figured.

The first letter had landed as a joke.

That was fine. Enough jokes, and eventually one of them turns into a nightmare.

That night, back at my rented apartment, I got a call from home. It was my father's caregiver.

"Mr. Hanson, your father spiked a fever again today. He needs a better ventilator, and the deposit for it..."

I gripped the phone and stared at the mold stain on the wall.

"I'll call in tomorrow," I said.

I hung up and opened my banking app. Balance: 4,200 dollars.

My next month's paycheck was 3,000 dollars.

I sat on the edge of the bed and didn't move for a long time.

Then I opened my laptop and started writing the second letter.

This one was harder than the first. I didn't just lay out the numbers; I drew a full flowchart of the three subsidiaries' transfer pricing scheme.

I attached the target country's latest tax code and cited three near-identical precedents: one conglomerate hit with back taxes after an acquisition, for how much; one fund that walked straight into the same trap, and lost how much.

Every claim had a source. Every number had documentation behind it.

I sent this to multiple places at once: Alex's private inbox. Every member of the Pyatt Energy board. And the three co-investment funds backing the deal.

The moment I hit send, I knew the current running under the surface was about to break through.

The first letter had been a warning meant for Alex Pyatt alone.

This one flipped the whole board face-up for everyone to see.

If you won't listen, someone else will. You can pretend to be asleep, but someone out there is wide awake.

The second letter hit like a bucket of cold water thrown into boiling oil.

Someone on the board couldn't sit still anymore.